South Korea’s Migrant Worker Program Criticized for Allowing Abuses
South Korea’s Employment Permit System is coming under scrutiny by the foreign media which is likening its migrant agriculture workers as modern day slaves:
The Employment Permit System was launched in 2004, to replace a 1990s industrial trainee system notorious for exposing migrant workers to horrific working conditions. It was meant to afford migrant workers the same basic legal rights as Koreans. But critics say the current system is even more exploitative and traps workers into a form of servitude.
Migrant farm workers are more vulnerable than factory workers since rules about working hours, breaks and time off don’t apply to agriculture. The country’s Labor Standards Act doesn’t apply at all to workplaces with four or less employees, which is typical of many farms.
Choi Jung Kyu, a human rights lawyer, says workers at these farms are virtually unprotected against unjust firings or wage theft, uncompensated for workplace injuries and have scant access to health care. They often must pay $90-$270 a month to stay in miserable makeshift dormitories that often are just shipping containers equipped with propane tanks for cooking. Such temporary structures usually only have portable toilets.
Associated Press
You can read more at the link, but many of these elderly farm owners likely grew up in the same rough conditions these migrant workers find themselves in. It doesn’t make it right, but in their minds this is probably how they justify the conditions they have their workers living in.
This is the same around the world.
Migrant workers in agriculture are, in effect, treated little better than slave–and probably worse since slaves had to be purchased, so the investment was protected more than many of these people protect the workers who plant, raise, and harvest their crops.
There can’t be any legal remedy as long as people refuse to treat all other people as equals. Remember that Chamberlain at Munich (September 30, 1938) made a contract with the German Chancellor and had it in writing. Then, 11 months later (September 1, 1939), German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west.
Both sides have to honor their word. And right now, the people hiring the migrants don’t have any incentive to treat them any better. Meanwhile, “organizers” take advantage of the migrants to spread lies about the people hiring them.
Same as it ever was.